“He breathed once more, holding the air in his chest, as if it were not air but something more--a sweet taste of freedom, of all cares lifted, everything over and done.”

“Kittridge closed his eyes. So, the end. It would happen instantaneously, a painless departure, quicker than thought. he felt the presence of his body one last time: the taste of air in his lungs, the blood surging in his veins, the drumlike beating of his heart. The bomb was dropping toward them."I've got you," he said, hugging Tim fiercely; and again, over and over, so that the boy would be hearing these words. "I've got you, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you.”

“By the time they were done Peter realized that something significant had occurred, an acknowledgment that once made, could not be unmade. The body they had buried might have been a viral, but the person they had buried was a man.”

“Here she was, a women who could bolt-load a crossbow in under a second, put half a dozen long arrows in the air in fewer than five, blade a target dead through the sweet spot at six meters, on the run, on an off day; and yet knitting a pair of baby booties seemed completely beyond her power.”

“It was funny, Grey thought. Not funny ha-ha, but funny strange, the whole idea of time. He'd thought it was one thing but it was actually another. It wasn't a line but a circle, and even more; it was a circle made of circles made of circles, each lying on top of the other, so that every moment was next to every other moment, all at once. And once you knew this you couldn't unknow it. Such as now the way he could see events as they were about to unfold, as if they'd already happened, because in a way they had.”

“Zander was always sneaking off to the library to get more books ... Guy would read anything. Said books were more interesting than people.”

“He knew what he'd see; one more slack face, one more pair of eyes that had barely learned to read, one more soul that had stared into itself too long.”